Quantity to quality fallacy
| Summary | |
|---|---|
| Issue | People understand qualitative difference much better than quantitative. In addition, more “argumentative value” is assigned to qualitative difference than quantitative. |
| Exploit | Prove your point neglecting the quantity and focusing on being technically correct about quality. |
| Exploit example | Equalizing the state of press freedom in developed democracies and in autocratic regimes by focusing on the example of Julian Assange. |
| Defence | Leverage visualisation techniques to demonstrate the quantitative difference where applicable. |
One simple debate manipulation that I see being used all the time is replacing a quantitative measure with qualitative.
What’s cleaner, a surgery operating room or a garbage dump? What if I say they are the same – because both contain harmful bacteria?
One wrong step you could make as a less experienced debater, is to start arguing that an operating rooms are sterile. This is the argument that the manipulator was waiting for. They have already prepared all the necessary bulletproof evidence that the cleanest operating rooms do in fact contain bacteria, and lots of them. Now your argument is about whether operating rooms contain bacteria – which they do.
The manipulator will easily win this seemingly impossible argument in public, since the crowd likes “technically correct” arguments. The more you explain yourself, the more hopeless your position becomes.
This is made possible because the manipulator is reducing the quantitative aspect (the number, type, and severity of bacteria) to a qualitative aspect (the mere presence of bacteria). ■